My first time

[rmonks]

I have an order to print sleeve prints on my Gauntlet. The sleeve platten is 4in. wide. Question for those of you who have done sleeve prints on an auto??? Do I install a 4in. squeegee or us full length. Any other sleeve print tricks you want to share would be appreciated. Oh I just realized I need to place something on the floor as the shirts may drag.

[DCSP John]

For our 5" sleeve platens, we use 4" squeegees.
We also have smaller winged flood bars. This is huge.You can use regular floods, but someone
will have to make sure the ink stays where you want it to....

You probably wont get any shirt dragging unless you are printing the big boy sizes.

John

[inkman996]

A good tip if you have large size shirts that will drag or sweatpants you can loosely tie end the end that would drag. Its either that or place clean cardboard or plastic every where. Don't fool yourself into thinking a good sweep job on the floor will work, some way some how you will still pick up lint and crap.

[blue moon]

load through the collar, it will keep the shirts higher off the ground. Make sure your stencil is oriented the right way for this!

You can use the full width blades, but they might be toast when you are done printing if the edges of the platens cut the grooves in them. We have regular holders that we put short blades into just for the sleeves.

pierre

[mk162]

use the regular blades, but take off a lot of pressure

[Sbrem]

We use the regular blades, pressure backed way off, no problems yet after tens of thousands of sleeves...

Steve

[alan802]

If all you have is regular blades then I wouldn't bother making smaller ones and just use them as they are like others have said.  We've always used them for all print sizes but a good general rule of thumb is to use a squeegee blade that is relative to the print size if you have the ability to do so.  I wish we had 40 blade holders and a set of blades of 16", 12", 8" and 4" because according to some gurus, it does make a difference.  I've seen it personally a few times recently with some of the testing we've been doing on one hit prints.  But 99% of what we all do doesn't require us to be that detailed with our setups, thank goodness.

[ZooCity]

We cut 'em down to the size of the sleeve platen and round the corners, load in a standard holder.

I need to find a 4" wide wing flood that will mount on the old series 1 presses, it sucks not having the right size flood on sleeves but you can get by with a standard 16" wing and about a quart of ink in there.

[Printficient]

After calling Randall and answering this question and one other he bought something from me.   Maybe I should have this as a parameter.